My 2017 Summer Vacation (Part 1) | Philippines

In the duration of 6 weeks I made it to two countries --Philippines and Canada! In an earlier post I told you about my Canada journey and now I'm sharing my Philippines one!

I stayed in Philippines for 3 days and I went to my mom's university, spent time with my grandparents, went to a museum, did an escape room and had a lot of halo-halo (a special dessert with shaved ice and lots of other ingredients)!

When we went to my moms university, we met up with some of my mom's friends! At my mom's university there were two statues: The Oblation (A naked man) and Uplift (Floating woman, bottom right in collage). They were really cool! We also went to UP Town Center, where I ate an El Fuego (one above the black) for dinner. It had ice cream and cake inside the marshmallow!

We also met with my mom's cousin and his children. Together we went to an escape room with a theme based on mutants! We were able to get out, fortunately (top right photo in collage)! After that we got bubble tea.

During the stay we also went to the Ayala Museum. In the museum, it tells you all about the Philippines' history. There was also a virtual reality experience!

Dogs are so cute! I got to spend some time with Princess and Prince (bottom row, left side of statue)! Princess and Prince/Taba (Taba means fat and that is all he responds to) are the names of the dogs that my great-aunt has. They are so cute!

Although all these things were fun, the highlight was eating sisig! Sisig is parts of a pig's head that have been chopped up and cooked together with shallots, onions, garlic! It was actually really good!

What is the most extravagant thing that you've ate?

MeZoeSelf 

My 2017 Summer Vacation (Part 2) | Canada

Sorry I keep forgetting to write! Anyways, this summer I went back to Coquitlam,Vancouver! It took 12 to 13 hours! Ugh, it was so tiring! But, it was worth it once we got there.

There were a lot of exciting things I did this summer; such as, I attended my first bridal shower and wedding, enjoyed myself at a summer camp at my dad's old university, played with the cutest dog ever, went rock climbing, and other fun things!

This is me and my cousin in our flower girl dresses!
(me still gaming :p)

For the wedding, I was a flower girl with one of my other cousins and two of my auntie's nieces. At first, I had absolutely no idea what a bridal shower was! And it didn't help that my mom kept telling me that at a bridal shower is where you give the bride an actual shower! But I had great fun that afternoon!

During the wedding, I was quite nervous! But it turned out okay. One thing I really liked was all the candies that was there for the taking.  There were take-out boxes and you could just fill them up with all the candy you want!! But, obviously, my absolute favourite part of the wedding was the ceremony!

The best part of my vacation, though, was the rock climbing!

Left: Me on a hard climb
Top Right: Me starting my ascent
Middle Right: My brother bouldering
Bottom Right: Me going up a 40-meter ladder that sways

I love rock climbing! Because when I got to the top, I feel powerful! :p  I also love doing it because it challenges me!

I did the most climbing during the session, then came my dad, my brother, then my mom. One of my favourite parts of it was the auto belaying! What you do is you clip yourself to the rope, then you just climb up. When you want to stop, you just let go and you sort of free fall for a second, then you slowly descend! It was so cool!

Actually, rock climbing was how my mom and dad met!

Blueberry Picking!

Blueberry picking! This is like an annual summer tradition for my family! This year we found some good blueberries; they were really juicy! To find them all we did was pull down some branches! They were all hiding! Something I love about going blueberry-picking, apart from picking the berries, are the fresh smoothies they serve at that place! I had a raspberry one!

This is India, my cousins' dog! She's a bernedoodle -  a Bernese mountain dog crossbred with a poodle. We all had so much fun with her over the summer!

But the best part was visiting spending time with my cousins again!

What did you do over your summer?

MeZoeSelf

Tung Chee-Hwa

Hi!! I'm going to be writing about Tung Chee-Hwa (because I've got to do this for a Cub Scout badge!!). Also, sorry that I haven't been posting anything. I've just been very busy! :(

Tung Chee-Hwa was the first Chief Executive of Hong Kong and he served for two terms (1997-2005). Tung was born in Shanghai on July 7, 1937. His family were rated the 16th wealthiest in HK, with a total value of US$3 billion (his family got a lot of money from their family business)! He moved to Hong Kong when he was 12.

Tung Chee-Hwa

He took over his family business in 1981. But, since 1985, their company was heavily in debt and on the edge of bankruptcy. However, Henry Fok helped the Tung family, with support of the Beijing government. Then Tung Chee-Hwa grew closer with the government and was appointed to  Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Then he went to to run for the first chief executive of  Hong Kong.  On 11th December 1996, he was sworn in.

Later in his years, Tung Chee-Hwa's popularity and reputation became ruined because Hu Jintao gave a speech in public about Tung Chee-Hwa's poor governance.

During his time as Chief Executive, Tung Chee-Hwa looked into the financial crisis that was spreading through Asia and had hit Hong Kong. His work was affected a lot by the crisis and the public criticized him for his governing style.There also was a plummet of jobs and less value in the stocks. Also, he proposed a lot of new structures, such as Disney Land!! Another thing he did was re-design the new Hong Kong airport.

Tung Chee-Hwa is now 79 and retired. He had many accomplishments. In 2006, he won a Grand Bauhinia Award, Hong Kong's highest award which recognizes his significant contributions that he has made.

Book Review - Out Of My Mind

This is a book review on Out Of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper. I read this and I was crying so much! I hope you like this........

Title:
Out Of My Mind
Author:
Sharon M. Draper
Summary:

This book is about Melody, a girl who can't walk nor talk. The things she can't do with her body, she makes up with things she can do with her brain. When she finally makes the quiz team her team betrays her. Will she forgive them or will she stay miserable forever?

Opinion:

This book was awesome!! Even though I was crying at some parts, it just showed how good this book is and how good the story line is. Out Of My Mind shows that everybody should be treated the same, no matter their disabilities and their weaknesses.

Rating: 5/5


I hope you will read this book yourself, I recommend it highly. If you have read it, please tell me what you thought of it!

A friendly reminder: Make sure you have a box of tissues close by! :)

MeZoeSelf

Book Review - The Menagerie (Trilogy)

Today I'm going to write a book review on The Menagerie Trilogy. I hope you enjoy and chose to read this book. I highly recommend this if you like mystery and mythology (I also like this book because there's a girl named Zoe in it! )

Title:
The Menagerie
Author:
Tui T. Sutherland
Summary:

The main characters in this book are Logan, Blue and Zoe. Blue's and Zoe's families are the owners of the Menagerie. Logan is just a regular school kid until he finds something under his bed. Logan one day finds himself inside a Menagerie (Zoe's families one,) and finds out that what he thought were mythological were actual real! He finds himself on a hunt to find the six griffin cubs that had gone missing.

Opinion:

I think that this book is a really good book. It's rating is 4.5/5. I think that it would be better if they had more BOOKS!!! I think that these books are really good overall, though.

Title:
The Menagerie - Dragon on Trial
Author:
Tui T. Sutherland
Summary:

This book is the continuation of 'The Menagerie'. Logan finds out that the goose that laid golden eggs has been killed and everybody blames Scratch, the dragon. Logan and Zoe must prove Scratch innocent before they are forced to shut down the Menagerie.

Opinion:

I think this book has a good twist in the story which is totally unexpected and I like it because it then makes you think 'wait, what?' I also like that it's original. I rate this book 5/5 because it's even better than the first book.

Title:
The Menagerie - Krakens and Lies
Author:
Tui T. Sutherland
Summary:

In this book Logan and Zoe have to find out who's sabotaging the Menagerie and put a stop to them. Also, Logan finds himself trying to save his mom at the same time. Will they be able to save the Menagerie?

Opinion:

I think this book is really good especially because they add suspense and things like that. I rate this book 5/5 because it's really interesting and intriguing.

Thanks for reading this post! :) ! I hope that you will read these books and if you do get a chance to read them, then I hope you will enjoy them.

MeZoeSelf

Summer Road Trip 2016 | San Fransisco

Hi!!! I'm sorry that I've not gone on my blog and made new posts, but I've been so busy with things this summer 2016! This post is about what I've done during the Summer so far.

Part 1

San Francisco

The road trip to San Francisco was 2 DAYS long. I  felt so carsick!!!! We stopped over in Salem, Oregon and stayed in a hotel for the night  before continuing on in the morning. Most of the time in the car, I was singing songs to the radio to cheer myself up.

Fisherman's Wharf

At Fisherman's Wharf we saw sea lions, street performers, and we went to this awesome place where they sold clam chowder in a bowl of sour dough bread! At that restaurant ( Boudin ) I ate ham and cheese with bacon for lunch. For my drink I had strawberry soda and it exploded!! It was quite funny when that happened (because I shook it on purpose!)

Lombard St. (Crookedest St.) 

The climb up to Lombard St. was so, so, so steep! But, it was worth the climb. Being up there was awesome!!!

China Town

In China Town the main highlight for me was the dim sum there. We had lunch at a famous dim sum restaurant. It was famous because Obama ordered take-out there and went to pick it up himself in person. I'm not sure of this but, I think that also Stephen Hawking went there because on a board there was a picture of him there. So we waited for around an hour and a half to be seated and then the food came......... DUN DUN DUN!!!!!! It turned out that we had ordered way too much food! We ordered sooooo much food that we had enough to eat for dinner too! So that's what we did, we had it for dinner. :)

Tram

When we got on the tram, I was a bit scared at first. Partly because we were going down a hill and then going back up! All the kids weren't allowed to go on the first cabin because they might fall out of the tram so I was quite sad. : (

Muir Woods

Muir Woods was definitely my favorite part of the trip. All the trees that I saw made me overwhelmed!!! The were so tall and so big!!! We were sadly not allowed to touch the trees because they may have ticks in them. I was soon happy because I got a bingo badge!! Basically if you find all the the objects on your card in a line you can get the badge!

This is what we basically did in San Francisco this summer, but this wasn't all that we did during this summer.   We also went to Vancouver, but I'm going to put that in my next post!

The Aviary

At my school, the Year 4's went on a field trip to Hong Kong Park. I thought it was very interesting so I'm going to tell you about it. ( By the way, this post is also for my homework.)

When we arrived at Hong Kong Park, we had to stay in our groups with our parent helper. While waiting for the other classes to arrive, I just looked at the fountain. It looked like the water was a wall, like a curtain. As we made our way through the park, we passed the pond. In the pond there were a few turtles and  lots of fish! We also saw one or two water skaters, though. Our parent helper was also asking us questions about the pond and we noticed that some fish were better at camouflaging than others because of the color of their scales. We also noticed that the fish would come close to us, as if they wanted food! I think that the fish were very, very hungry!

The fountain (Singwa Lim)

The pond (Photo credit)

After getting to the park and eating our snack, we headed to the aviary. The aviary is basically a big green house, but not really a green house. It has trees and stuff like that but, humans put them there. Inside I saw lots and lots of birds, some of which had very colorful feathers, but I also saw some that had feathers that were rather dull. I liked more the birds with the brightly colored feathers, although I think they felt a bit awkward because we were all staring at them. Although they were very beautiful and graceful, some of the birds pooped on us! Naughty, naughty birds!

The aviary from the outside (Photo credit)

Some of the birds eating (Photo credit)

Since we'd spent quite a long time in the aviary, we started heading to the place where we were going to have our lunch. We then ate our lunch and played hand games, told stories, and other fun stuff!

After that we went back to the school in the bus. I thought it was quite fun to go there and I want to go again.

So, have you been to the Hong Kong Aviary or Hong Kong Park before? If you have, what was your experience? What was your favorite place? If you haven't been there before, I'd recommend going.

MeZoeSelf